Hi Po, I would like to help you with your senario of a farmer who acidentially unearths a valuble item. First of if the said valuble item/s were previously deliberately concealed by someone they are 'presently' classed as treasure trove but in the case of a gold necklass studded with diamonds pulled up from a swamp for example they are technically the property of the finder, depending of course on who owns actually owns the land. Any disputed entitlements are usually decided by the courts unless private agreements are made. In all cases honesty is the best policy and any such finds should always be reported the local museum who might even wish to buy it from you for a good price.

The big problem arrises when a ship was accidently lost at sea in say a storm as big Spainish Galleons often did whilst heavy laden with tons of Axtec and Inca treasure, if the wreck is located inside another countries territorial waters (and although the treasure was not deliberately hidden) that country now declares it to be part of their history and heritage and as such they own it all. The Spainish would argue that declaration and say it is part of THIER heritage/history and subsequently it is their soul property, I would imagine the decendants of the Aztec and Incas might make the same claims, the high courts ultimately have to decide each case on its merits.

In your senario no permits at all would be required because the farmer was not a deliberate treasure hunter and the find was accidentally discovered by him during the course of his normal work in the field presumably on his own property, in addition to that he openly declared it to the authorities, check out one very happy farmer.

Thanks for the detailed explanation, though that was my question, not Po's (easy to see how one might confuse the user-names, though!)

What you said about ships and territorial waters made me think about if the treasure were to turn out to be Aztec gold, looted by Conquistadors, would the Mexican government then step up to the plate and claim that it belonged to them, even though it was looted by people from another country who then buried it in a third?

Hi Procutus, there you go again, useing that dirty word Tr*su*re come on now get with the program mate don't you know that irrespective of who originally owned this discovered gold,silver, platinum and precious jewels it only has to be re-defined and declared "heritage artefacts", for the claiming province or country to have the lot for nothing. I can see a lot of these sort of heritage wrecks soon being 'relocated' out into international waters.

Jo has will soon have to call her website "Oak Island Heritage" and the word will be removed from every new dictionary. If a treasure hunter gets caught trying to steal heritage artefacts he could get a $100,000 fine, when you think of what millions of dollars of treasure is waiting to be retrieved the authorities have to come up with something more worrying than that, I wonder if province could buy a submarine.

Yup, I was being just a tad Old-School with my vernacular there! Dirty word indeed!

You may have a point though, about provinces and governments re-classifying such finds as 'heritage artifacts' in order to claim ownership, regardless of provenance or how legitimate a claim is by individual parties. Sadly, that does appear to be what's happening here with whatever may lie buried beneath Oak Island.